New CCCP is out

Was it worth the wait? Yes. Except no, not really. But it’s out, so get it anyway.

As to why this matters… If you have any playback issues with Whine-Subs releases, I’m going to first ask what you’re using to play them. If it’s not CCCP, I’m going to tell you to get CCCP and then let me know if that works. It’s the standard I’ve been using since I first started subbing (2003) and it’s the standard I’ll use until the day I die (2011).

For reviews, I will be rocking CCCP on my system. If you see screenshots that portray your release “incorrectly”, I’m going to ask why it wouldn’t display correctly on CCCP. Since it probably should display correctly on CCCP, there is a good chance someone forgot to mux the right fonts in, so don’t blame me.

It’s a better *standard* than telling someone to set up their system with what Saka-chan uses. If someone new to anime says “I want to start watching shows on my computer”, I’m going to tell them “Okay, but make sure you have CCCP set up — it will improve your video playback.” I’m not going to tell them to download each filter separately and then configure their system so they all work properly.

This is more of a bare minimum as far as expectations go. And I think it’s an acceptable base for people to work from.

Not sure I entirely agree with you that it’s a better standard vs something libavcodec-based, like mplayer or whatever. Those are consistent and available on pretty much every platform more powerful then a graphing calculator, typically as a single application or install command. I’ve haven’t looked at CCCP in many years, but I assume it stays reasonably up to date. Nonetheless, if there was ever a time where something played perfectly with recent ffmpeg but not CCCP, I wouldn’t blame any group for saying “looks fine in mplayer, go fuck yourself.”

I don’t know enough about playback to argue whether or not Mplayer (or KCP, as xviruz mentioned) is better. All I know is that we as a scene have generally recommended CCCP to the viewers and there needs to be a significant reason for me to adopt a different base standard.

I think the scene’s point of view is: if it ain’t broke, why fix it? CCCP has been the recommended weapon of choice certainly as long as I can remember. MPlayer was only really mentioned due to its compatibility with Macs or Linux or something (I dunno, I use Windows).

Scaling algorithms are on the same level. MadVR _does_ have better dithering though.

Adopting MPlayer2 as a recommended player means that correct playback would be guaranteed using libass. I haven’t seen an error using the current libass that wasn’t a typesetting mistake that xy-vsfilter silently ignored.

I know nothing about typesetting, would you mind explaining why typesetting with libass in mind is unpleasant and how xy-vsfilter is better? Well, not that I have a choice either way, being a non-Windows user.

Hm, looking at the project page of xy-vsfilter, it seems the project is open source… I wonder why it hasn’t been ported to Linux.

libass has, last I checked, a bunch of hilarious bugs that makes various tags like \fay pretty useless. Even now, there are many signs that are pretty much mutually exclusive between (xy-)vsfilter and libass – they either work on one or they work on the other. Since everyone else targets vsfilter and most people use it, typesetting to libass is a good way to make your typesetting look broken to most of your viewers.

Libass has… issues. (ex. {\fscx\fscy} scales {\fax\fay}. Therefore, on motion tracking lines, which often have something like {\fs2\fscx2000\fscy2000} due to vsfilter [not xy-vsfilter] not allowing floating point values for {\fscx\fscy}, you often get this with {\fax\fay}: http://afternoonnapsempire.org/files/amagami_plus-utw-libass.jpg )

That’s a good example of the differences. The second arrow is in the same place with xy-vsfilter, but not with libass. You’ll see that libass computes \fay based on the current position, while xy-vsfilter does it by the position of the start of the line.

Thanks for pointing out that scene, Xythar. This should be enough for a good bug report against libass.

I went to the wiki immediately after downloading it – no update. But JEEB updated it roughly 20mins ago so you might be interested in linking that as well for the complete changelog. (http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/)

Also, xy-VSFilter seems to be the standard now. Well, anything is better than VSFilter.

Am looking forward to hearing more about this joint. The show airs thursday evening when we convert to USA timezones. So i’m guessing this means that we should expect an early morning saturday release, huh?

Wednesday night is optimistic, sure. But I can knock out a three-pass edit in 1-1.5 hours after I get off work (add another half-hour for four passes). Assuming everything (script, typesetting, timing, scriptless encode) gets finished before I roll on, it wouldn’t be out of the question for QC -> release to take only a few hours more.

1. Script only (Get the easy stuff out of the way that would slow down the second pass.) 10-15 mins.
2. Video/audio (Watch it through and fix where needed.) 40-60 mins.
3. Script only (Fix any lines that I know need to be fixed but I didn’t have enough time to focus on during the second pass. Quick skim for issues.) 10-15 mins.

Then it goes off to QC. Familiarity with source material/watching it raw before the script is ready for edit can decrease time spent. What, did you think it takes me three hours to fix up a script? I’d consider myself a failure if I spent more than two hours on a script as just an editor. That’s the standard I hold myself to and it used to be what all editors I knew did as well.

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<~Arashi> . 。O
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<~Arashi> …
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<~Arashi> we will try to get it out beofre any other group
<~Arashi> .access add Dark_Sage 3

Plus CCCP doesn’t require me to do shit. Cause I’m pretty lazy. I mean, I’ve setup MadVR and shit before, but if I can just run the CCCP installer and get almost the same thing, then that will be my option every time.

This seems like an ideal thread to ask. What video player do you use these days Dark Sage? I’m still using VLC even though I’ve heard a lot of people badmouth it because, frankly, it plays the files I want it to and I’m too lazy to switch. But the release of the new version of CCCP is giving me a brief flash of ambition to update my entire viewing experienceso if there is a different player I should be using these days I’d like to get in on that.

Hmm I always get a lot of weird screen artifacting with MPC. A lot of green shit all over the place. Guess I’ll just stick to VLC then, it works for me without ever giving me any grief and really I can’t ask for much more than that.

Sort of sounds like you haven’t updated CCCP since before 10-bit. I’d suggest clearing out (use Insurgent from CCCP site) all old/unnecessary codecs and install the new one. I’ve been using it for more years than I can remember and the only time I ever had problems was when the 10-bit stuff started coming out and I hadn’t updated the software.

Late reply, perhaps, but I’m surprised that noone’s posted about a home-cinema setup. I can’t be the only 20+ that watches his cartoons in the living room via a network streaming device (NAS > Popcorn Hour > AVR > TV)